


Dream

by Nerd_of_Camelot



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Comfort, Flashbacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:56:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10883847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerd_of_Camelot/pseuds/Nerd_of_Camelot
Summary: Sometimes, Junkrat sleeps.Well, that’s not strictly true, he guesses. He sleeps every night.Sometimes, Junkrat dreams.





	Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if I completely butchered the characters here but this is my first Overwatch fic and Junkrat is my favorite so of course I had to write something that involves him being in pain.

Sometimes Junkrat sleeps.

 

Well, that’s not strictly true, he guesses. He sleeps every night. He sleeps every night and it’s usually just a dusting of darkness over his consciousness. And he sleep talks, he knows. He mumbles and he can never be sure of what he says but since Roadhog hasn’t abandoned him yet it must not be anything too serious or disturbing.

At least not disturbing on the level that they would find something disturbing. Not on an emotional level. He knows he used to have a habit of spouting off how he felt about people when he dreamed, but ever since the radiation dug its claws in he hasn’t done that, to his knowledge. His mumblings have become darker, twisted things.

He was told, by someone he knew once upon a time, that when he talked in his sleep now he whispered murderous fantasies. Gruesomely explained how he wanted to take his prosthetic arm and shove it through someone’s chestplate and pull out their beating heart and fucking _bite_ the damn thing and then spit the blood in their face.

He doesn’t remember ever wanting to do that, but it’s a nice idea nonetheless.

 

He thinks maybe the better way to say it is that sometimes he dreams. Sometimes his exhaustion overtakes him and drags him into a blank world of messy colors splattered against black and white. There’s a lot of red, the splatters different than that of the other colors. He knows it’s blood. He knows. He understands.

And those are the _good_ dreams.

Because sometimes when he falls asleep he’s dragged into his memories. Things he thought he’d long forgotten but remembered somewhere in his fragmented mind. In his fingertips, in his muscles, all the way down to his very bones.

And because of those deep-rooted things, no memory-dream he had could be pleasant. Because he remembered what it led to. He remembered that that one happy day out with his friends in the middle of nowhere outside Junkertown would eventually lead to him finding _it_ and becoming irradiated. Lead to his mind splintering slowly, agonizingly.

 

How fucked is it, he wonders, that he remembers what it was like to be sane?

 

On this night, the memory-dream that claims him when he closes his eyes is one he had never forgotten in the first place.

He is running, running for his life. Feet - both feet. Real feet - pounding on the glassy sand. His breath is coming in ragged pants, heart stuttering painfully. Behind him he hears the hum of one of those bodgy Omnics following him. Too close. _Way_ too close.

He’s terrified.

He’d _known_ there was something shonky going on when he’d gotten a call from someone who usually went out of their way to avoid him. Why had he gone? Why had he even responded at all? What a great bleeding drongo he was.

He knew he was rooted when he tripped.

Getting back up and trying to run now was like tits on a bull. The Omnic had already gained too much ground on him. He’s stonkered and he knows it.

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t get up anyway. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t start running despite the feeling of hopelessness deep in his chest.

It catches his wrist in one of its too-strong hands.

He remembers the pain with unrivaled clarity to this day.

It yanks him back, and he wasn’t dumb enough to try to run straight forward. He’d wrench his arm right out of its ruddy socket if he tried something like that. Despite popular belief, Jamison Fawkes was a _genius_ and even if he didn’t think of himself in that light his brain knew what it was doing, especially pre-radiation as it was. And he recalls something about twisting to get out of an attacker’s grip, moving your trapped appendage toward the weakest part of their hand and yanking away with a nice twist to make sure they lost their grip.

He tries.

The Omnic merely tightens its grip and twists in the other direction. Keeps twisting. Keeps twisting. Rat feels the muscles rip. Feels the sinew snap apart. Feels the skin begin to tear and the bones give away with a sickening snap.

 

And he’s jolted awake, already halfway into sitting straight up on his miserable excuse for a bedroll with his flesh hand covering his mouth, muffling an agonized scream that had left his mouth unhindered all those years ago. It comes out now as a weak, muffled keen from the back of his throat. There are tears at the corners of his eyes.

What a great bleeding drongo he still is.

When he’s sure he won’t scream again if he lets go, he lets his hand drop to his side and flops back. Part of him revels in the sharp crack of contact with the concrete below him. He’s woken up like this more times than he can count but he realizes belatedly that this time he isn’t alone.

He’s not lying down under some makeshift shelter by himself in the middle of nowhere.

His bodyguard is here. He probably saw _all_ of that. Saw _everything_. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the hulking man staring at him.

He follows his first instinct. The instinct to sit up and sneer across the room. To sneer and say, “You done starin’ over there ‘r wot, mate?”

There is, as usual, no response.

No matter. He’d make all the noise, as usual. That was normal. That was comforting. He’s fine being the only one talking. Nobody argues when it’s just you talking. Nobody tells you to shut up. Nobody can _make_ you shut up.

“Ya have fun watchin’ me suffer?” He continues to sneer at the man, still receiving nothing in response but that silent stare. “Crackin’ a fat over it?” He suggests. A grunt, this time, and as he can’t tell if it’s an affirmative or a denial he just sneers more. “Gettin’ all hot ‘n bothered ‘bout me wakin’ up screamin’ me ‘ead off, hm?”

Another grunt, and right as he begins to open his mouth to continue his rant, the man rumbles out a low, “Wondering why you did, actually.”

Junkrat, in any other situation, would have considered getting a real, _verbal_ response out of Roadhog to be some sort of righteous blessing. Right now it was more like a sentence of eternal damnation.

“Aint none o’ yer bleedin’ bizzo, is it?” He’s getting defensive. It’s the only thing he can do. He has to go back to before this - go back to hiding behind barbed insults and shark toothed sneers. “‘M not payin’ ya t’wonder why I do what I do, ya drongo.”

 

He tries to shove down any growing feelings of companionship he may have been developing for the brute across the room. There was no use in that. No use in getting chummy with him. He probably won’t stick around too long after tonight. After Junkrat verbally tears him limb from limb because that’s what he always does when someone sticks their nose into his nightmares.

He’s so enveloped in trying to put his walls back up, walls that he’d purposely torn down for the sake of some measure of trust between he and his bodyguard, he didn’t notice the brute approaching. He thinks, absently, that he musta been _really_ distracted, in that case.

 

“Rat.” The man says, sitting down next to him. “Yer payin’ me to know what’s wrong and when.” He reminds him in that low rumble. “Yer payin’ me to protect ya, but it’s hard to do that when I can’t tell if you’re in pain or not.”

Junkrat snorts. “Believe me, ya drongo, yer gonna know when I’m in pain.”

“Mental pain is a distraction.” He rumbles, all reason as usual. “Yer more likely t’get physically hurt if yer distracted.”

Another snort. “This aint nothin’ ya need t’worry yer big ‘ead about.” He rolls his eyes. But the Hog doesn’t move a muscle and he can feel him staring at him behind that gas mask. It’s making him uncomfortable, so he hisses out, “Back off, ya brute. Yer in my personal space.”

“You’re always in mine.”

He hates that he can’t fight that logic. But he can sure as hell ignore it, and he _can_ , despite popular belief, stay quiet. So he goes silent. He goes silent and tinkers with a bomb he’d left near his bedroll. Hog doesn’t go anywhere. Rat’s beginning to think that any chance he had of staying quiet is beyond the black stump by now. He’s unnerved and no matter how hard he tries he can’t ever shut up when he’s nervous.

Why is Hog watching him so hard? Why does he care? He just told him that this mental pain was nothing he needed to be worried about.

… Even though it is.

And, oh, there he goes. He’s gone and distracted himself from the unnerved feeling of being stared at ceaselessly. But it’s not with anything pleasant. Not even close. The memory is continuing in his head, now.

 

His arm rips away from his body, from the elbow down. He screams again. He’s making one hell of a racket and he knows how this will end, but he’s still terrified. In the present, the half-deconstructed bomb falls out of his hands and rolls over his covers.

He doesn’t move to stop it.

And now Roadie’s _completely_ sure there’s something wrong but he just sits there and keeps staring. There doesn’t seem to be anything he can do to get an answer without resorting to his usual brutal tactics.

The Omnic tosses Rat to the ground, glassy sand digging into his face, getting in the open wound. Cutting into his already wrecked arm. And he turns over, of course, to look up at the thing he’s sure is about to take his life while it grabs him by the ankle and plants a huge robotic foot firmly on his upper thigh.

At the time, he had no clue what was going on. But he knew now. He knows. He wants to stop it but he knows it’s only a memory and he knows there’s nothing he can do.

The Omnic lifts his lower leg and his thigh couldn’t move at all under the weight of its foot and he feels the muscles protest. Feels the burning pain. His femur creaks.

And then it snaps and he screams and the Omnic doesn’t stop until it’s pulled it completely off, tearing ligaments and muscles away and how in the world is it such a clean break he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t try to understand because it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it

 

“Rat.”

 

Roadhog would never admit out loud that he had grown genuinely worried. Would never admit that seeing tears gathering in the corners of Junkrat’s eyes, spilling over, had sent him into a panicked frenzy. But it was true. Because Junkrat didn’t cry. Junkrat didn’t stay quiet like that. Something had to be horribly, _horribly_ wrong if the little bugger had shut up and started crying.

And Junkrat would never admit that he was grateful Roadhog had said something, because it brought everything back into focus with an audible click in his mind. The familiar terrain of the Outback disappeared, replaced with their current hideout. His eyes move to the bomb he’d dropped. Everything is blurry and faded and it takes him a minute to realize he’s crying. To realize his eyes are filled to the brim with hot, salty tears that continually spill over onto his sooty cheeks.

 

He reaches up with his flesh hand smears the wetness away.

 

“You okay, Rat?” Roadhog asks after another silence.

“‘M ace.” He replies shakily. He hates the tremble in his voice. He thought he ditched this kind of weakness ages ago but here it is rearing its ugly head.

“Ya sure?”

“Told ya ‘m ace.” He grows. “Lemme ‘lone.”

The shake is gone but he doesn’t like being this much of an ass any better, really. It’s just… Well he supposes it’s just more desirable to have everyone hate you for being a dickhead rather than make fun of you for being a total ankle-biter about everything.

“Not ‘til you tell me what’s wrong.”

He wants to cry more. Wants to scream. Why is Roadhog suddenly acting like a decent fucking human being? The big whacker has never bothered to care before, so why start now?

“Aint yer bleedin’ bizzo.” He repeats his earlier response, already prepared for Roadhog’s exasperated grunt. “But if ya really _gotta_ know, ya drongo, I was rememberin’ losin ‘em.”

Roadhog is completely silent, and behind the lenses Junkrat can see confusion in his eyes.

“Me limbs, ya dipstick.”

An understanding grunt. “Painful?” He asks after a moment.

“Losin’ ‘em or rememberin’ it?” Rat shoots back.

“Both.”

“Yeah, okay? It’s painful. Ya happy now?”

 

A grunt. A huge hand on his head, patting gently and then rustling what’s left of his hair. It’s a startlingly soft, friendly action. Sweeter than anything he’s ever received from anyone, made all the more so by the fact that Roadhog usually goes out of his way to avoid touching him and the fact that nobody has _willingly_ touched Junkrat since before the radiation. Since right after he’d lost his limbs. And that had just been the junker who’d come to rescue him and who’d dumped him off in his house. After that there had been no physical contact, no touching at all from anyone unless it was an accidental brush of his flesh arm with Roadhog’s stomach.

He closes his eyes and leans into the touch. Roadhog makes a low, rumbly noise that, after a moment or two, Junkrat realizes is laughter.

So he laughs, too. And just like that his mind starts running a thousand clicks a minute and the phantom pains in his limbs disappear while he thinks of new, wonderful, _awful_ plans and he can hear himself mumbling them aloud and hears Roadhog grunting in reply, the occasional laugh shaking free when he mentions something particularly violent that he’s planning for Roadhog to do. And he laughs too.


End file.
